When you realize the world has no expectations of you, it's possible to live your life freely. When you observe without expectation, you see the world at its most authentic. Ideals and standards are border fences. Contempt and apathy are a windshield. Let the wind enter your lungs, then breathe it out again.

BasedGod stepped out onto the stage smiling. Everyone cheering. Standing and clapping. We sat down, but like the grown versions of children with learning disabilities that we all were, we couldn't sit still. Lil B was like the kid in class who the teacher let give a speech in place of a math test. There were no rules anymore.

A common argument against anarchy goes: "It would bring out the worst in people." I don't know if this Leviathan approach is entirely representative of a theoretical anarchist society. Yet, I'm forced to admit, a newly crumbled state would create more than a few assholes.

Some took this opportunity to unleash their inner learning-disabled child. Others became fixated by the man, watching his mind unfold. Lil B judged neither, instead focusing on trying to explain the joy of discovering a new sensation. When words failed him, he put his hand on the podium and pet it like a cat.

"Namsayin?" he said.

We cheered and clapped. I nodded and smiled. When my head went up, the sensation of the podium descended like melting snow through my body. When my head went down, I fell headlong into the psychedelic atmosphere now permeating through the Milt Glick ballroom. A din of nervous laughter from the crowd turned to white noise beneath the Based God's words. He kindly requested silence for his next revelation.

"It occurred to me that I have never seen a doctor with gold teeth," said Brandon "Lil B" McCartney.

"What is he even talking about?" scoffed a college student to his girlfriend's blond hair. The hair scoffed along. Neither the blond, nor the hair it colored, nor the scalp that bound its golden follicles, had any time for Lil B's nonsense. College Student brought his girlfriend here to laugh, to scratch his stubble, to rest assured that he was talented and intelligent, a bright future unfolding ahead of him. Time to laugh at the freak. But the freak was busy tormenting over what it might mean that he has never encountered a doctor wearing a golden grill on the job.

"Then it occurred to me that I should become that doctor," said Lil B. "I'ma need your help. You are in college, you're smart. I know that you can help me become the first doctor with gold teeth."

He apologized for not being able to find the right words for such a high-minded crowd. The crowd took the flattery and swallowed it up. Lil B looked at his notes to regain his train of thought. He gathered himself around a seemingly one-word prompt.

"Nature," he repeated. "Nature is very inspiring to me. Nawmsayin? Grass just doing it's thing."

As he went on, I recalled a time in middle school when I convinced a friend that when people were "smoking grass" they were actually gathering grass from their lawns, and putting it in a pipe to get high. He decided to try it. We walked a couple of blocks over to his dad's house to take his tobacco pipe. Then we gathered the clippings from a lawnmower and filled the bowl with it. He coughed a lot, and said he felt strange, but wasn't sure if it was really working. Both of us wondered if the other was in on the joke. Neither of us were.

"Then you realize, maybe they smell good because bees be peein' on 'em. You know it's worse than that. You know they been skeetin' up on 'em. And they smell amazing!"

He went on to make astute commentary on the workplace (You don't need to work. Work is important), education (Y'all are getting an education and I respect that), the justice system (Judges and police should be the most empathetic people around), architecture (I designed my own place. You're gonna love it), silence (I need silence every morning), CNN (At first I didn't know if I liked CNN. But then I realized CNN fucks with Lil B), anxiety (I know that's hard), and religion (This dude was trying to tell me about God after a show. I was just like, relax!). Often he would make a statement, then turn on it by saying the opposite.

"Don't judge a book by it's cover," he said. "Or do, if you want. Shit, I dunno. Do your thing."

College students in our vicinity called statements like these out for being contradictory. They missed the point. While contradictory, statements like these always struck me as insightful. They were the mark of a man who constantly questioned his deepest convictions, often by leaping to it's logical opposite.

Once I was a Christian, and I told everyone that Christ was the only truth. Then I was an atheist, and I called those who thought differently stupid and hopeless. Both extremes orbited around the same beating heart of reality. Only in accepting them both could I begin to burrow deeper, towards the light.

"I know y'all when you get stressed, you take drugs. I feel that," said Lil B, to the audience's cheers. "You don't gotta do that. You are the drug!"

I wonder if all the cats I've ever known are descended from colonial cats.